"Andrew McLaren" <andrew@fakeaddress.com> wrote:
"mac" wrote:

>> I noticed that the files in my E: drive are in blue font... What is the
>> significance of the blue font?

> This indicates the files are compressed using NTFS Compression.

> You can compress indiviual files, or you can specify Compression for a
> whole volume in Disk Manager (under Admin Tools). If everything on the
> drive is compressed, it probabaly means the whole Volume is compressed.
> That's okay - just means you get more disk space. NTFS compression is very
> efficient, in the performance dimension - there's very little overhead in
> compressing and uncompressing the files (and in fact, some disk IO is even
> faster, because there's less to read from disk). Compressed files can be
> used like any other file, you just open them in an application etc, no
> special handling is required.

On the last point ("no special handling required") there is at least one
exception, which applies only if you're using VMWare.

There is a tool the company distributes that allows users to mount a virtual
volume on a Windows host (allowing you, for example, to manipulate its
contents without having to boot into a virtual machine). Unfortunately, for
reasons I've not seen explained, the mount utility will refuse to talk to a
virtual disk that's hosted in a compressed file, even though VMWare has no
problems using that compressed file as a disk on a virtual machine.

Joe Morris